The 5th Generation Fighter challenge [FAR]

[Halsfury]

I am curious. Is there a particular reason the turbojets are restricted to 50% thrust? [edit]Turns out a singular TurboJet has 130 kN of thrust, and the singular F-16 engine has 131.2 kN of thrust. Forcing half throttle here is hardly a good way to display a 5th Gen fighter when its engines can't compete with a 4th Gen. Thoughts? [/edit]

Edit: More questions. Edit: More data to back up the questions.

Is there a particular reason droptanks are requested for bonus points? Is it simply because it's easier to dump fuel for a fight that way? My current plane iteration has an internal capacity of 1610 (8050kg) units of fuel on board, but it's unreasonable to load it with more than 630 (3150kg) for "local" work. [edit] In contrast, an F16 carries 2685kg of fuel internally. [/edit]

Is there a reason you ask for an operational time versus an operational range? [edit] I believe most fighters are measured in operational range rather than time... [/edit]

Sorry for the question bombardment, but I'm just trying to figure out if the jet I made while just goofing about qualifies. That and the operational range is more useful for a multi-role fighter than an operational time.

[edit] Another reason for this question bombardment is that I really do want to enter this, as the contest here quite interests me. [/edit]

It's all about catering to KSP.

The rules are supposed to encourage certain choices to limit the weight and flight envelope.

A 100% throttle turbojet is too much, it often ruins airframes when the throttle is held open and produces speeds which are too fast to even compare with real world jets. In KSP it's just excessive unless you're going to build an SR-71.

As for drop tanks, they do extend the range of a fighter so having the capability is important, they tend to take a backseat with the BD armoury version of the challenge, when not using BD armoury they are a means of determining how much armament is possible for a design, even though weapons systems themselves have other constraints like where to put them all.

Also the operational time rule is just based on the FAR data screen so it's not that accurate but gives an indication of how viable a fighter it is. 5th gen fighters are multirole so time in the air is a great indicator of operational effectiveness.

EDIT: I'll add you're plane to the leaderboard

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http://i.imgur.com/AYOH1pU.jpg

As a Messerschmitt fanboy, I have to find a way to make this thing reach it's historical calculated top speed of Mach 2 with a basic jet! If I manage to do that, I'm pretty sure it passes the challenge.

(It's supposed to be the Heluan Ha-300)

EDIT: Messerschmitt ftw!

http://i.imgur.com/4Yg5o07.jpg

Nice it's not easy to hit mach 2 with the basic jet, what's the score on it?

[Halsfury]

Actually Darth I take that back about the F-18 being done, I figured out how to increase the wing length and I am still working on reducing wing loading.

On the bright side I stopped the aeroelastic wobble of death which could occur before.

performance is going up, and I think that I could make this the BD armoury craft to beat with more tweaking

[FourGreenFields]

Nice it's not easy to hit mach 2 with the basic jet, what's the score on it?

Not yet calculated, and it's late in the evening here, so I don't think I'll be able to tweak the design, design a droptank for it, and do all the tests today.

[Halsfury]

Not yet calculated, and it's late in the evening here, so I don't think I'll be able to tweak the design, design a droptank for it, and do all the tests today.

I know it's an addiction, late in the evening has the connotation of 1 in the morning for me when it comes to KSP

In other news I've been updating the Hornet design to be more forgiving and generally widen the flight envelope.

I extended the wing length by half a foot or so on each side with a D type wing connector in a very clever way, instead of attaching the wing to the connector I used the translation tool to move the wing out as far as I could, then I stuck the D type wing panel to the inside of the wing to close the gap.

I moved the wing lower by a few inches and raised the elevons up, the reason for this is to keep the elevons out of the wing's wind shadow (which I theorized was the reason for the high alpha stall which occurred frequently at low speeds), And I swapped in a bigger elevon instead of the stander canard which changes the look a bit but it has been more stable at those low speeds.

Also I had a big design fail trying to attach super manoeuvre canards to the front of the hornet.

So the design went from this:

To this:

Nearly imperceptible but Ferram "Goldstein" knows...

Here it is so you can compare the two

http://www./download/3k7c5f0e5647nbq/FAR_BD_FA-18J_Super_Hornet_V2.craft

Edited August 19, 2015 by Halsfury

[TheHengeProphet]

I was actually about to make comments about your FA-18. I noticed that if I tried to have the AI take off, it would scrape your engines off. I fixed this by altering the AI's take-off speed from 70 to 120, which allows it to barely get by without scraping those things off.

I've been trying to dogfight it with my plane, but I've been having issues with the AI kind of mucking around and not firing missiles, or just being a very bad shot with the vulcans. I was impressed, however, when I shot the left engine off one of the two hornets I pitted against, and it continued to perform admirably, all things considered. I'm looking forward to testing your updated version.

And I get what you're saying about the way engines perform. They're incredibly undervalued at low speeds, and cascade to ridiculous power at high speeds. They're also incredibly inefficient...

Oh, since you commented that you're going by FAR standards on the estimated flight time, you may wish to amend the OP to reflect such. Even if the FAR readout comments I have 4+ hours of flight time, I rarely get more than 20 or 30 actual minutes, which makes me wonder if it's calculating on Kerbin time.

I am somewhat curious, though... You want a supercruise with fully-loaded drop tanks; however, that fuel is going to be used getting to supercruise altitude and speed. As an alternative to the exclusive drop-tank bonus fuel rule, might I suggest an alternative option of excess fuel over a set amount, or even a maximum lift mass beyond its dry weight? _{An F-16, for example, has a dry weight of 9.207t, and a maximum lift of 21.772t.} I mean, if I wanted to really exploit the drop-tank rule, I would have almost 0 fuel in the main craft, and just load up on drop-tanks. That would net me a bonus 1000L+ of fuel in drop tank score...

I think I may rework my the Adder a bit to allow for used mods to help conform to what most of you are using (basically getting rid of KAX on the craft, because I only use it for the landing gear), and also exploit Tweakscale a little more to fit more fuel in those drop tanks by shrinking down fuel fuselages.

[Halsfury]

Yes the hornet's engines are truly redundant as on the real thing.

Were you facing off against the old version? my advice is that speeds should be kept up so give the AI a 270m/s maximum speed for low altitude (up to 5000m) and crank it up to 320m/s for high altitude dogfighting.

It will break itself if you allow the AI to operate it in high dynamic pressure modes.

_______________________

Also I have no way of doing much in terms of changing the endurance rules.

And the drop tanks being partially empty by the time you reach altitude is ok, the primary reason for the test is to determine how tolerant the aircraft is of having that extra skin friction and wave drag associated with the drop tanks. The weight mainly impacts acceleration and climb rate which are considerations for a real aircraft.

The rules are rather threadbare but altering them except to ask that you don't subtract any fuel from your aircraft would be difficult since there are so many submissions scattered across so many pages that I would have to go back and fix each one.

It would be bloody nice if FAR calculated flight time based on actual fuel in the tank, maybe the solution is simply to ask for delta V readouts and calculate the flight time based on the mass flow rate of the engines at super cruise!

_______________________________

EDIT: actually I think that from now on it's best if you do use the mass flow rate and the delta V or the reported amount of fuel to determine flight time

That actually is quite sound and works just fine with the current rules

According to the resources screen, with 1/3rd throttle (super cruise setting) the 2 turbojets on the hornet eat through 0.19 litres per second.

Not including ballast fuel (160 litres) there is 1,016 litres of liquid fuel on board at takeoff

1,016 divided by 0.19 = 5,347.4 seconds

5,347.4 divided by 60 divided once ageing by 60 equals 1.4854 hours or 89 minutes at cruise

Edited August 20, 2015 by Halsfury

[FourGreenFields]

Ok, the Heluan HA-300 scored 13.8 points, basic jet, no BD armoury.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Craft file on KerbalX: http://kerbalx.com/crafts/4554

Edited August 20, 2015 by FourGreenFields

[CrisK]

Ok, the Heluan HA-300 scored 13.8 points, basic jet, no BD armoury.

http://imgur.com/a/bOqZN

Craft file on KerbalX: http://kerbalx.com/crafts/4554

This is my new favorite design of yours.

[Halsfury]

This is my new favorite design of yours.

It's a great design I agree, I don't want to download the mods to support it, but I'm thinking I might just install them just to fly it

[TheHengeProphet]

Ok, the Heluan HA-300 scored 13.8 points, basic jet, no BD armoury.

http://imgur.com/a/bOqZN

Craft file on KerbalX: http://kerbalx.com/crafts/4554

This thing is beautiful! For what is effectively a Gen 3 fighter, I'm amazed it was able to complete all the requirements. I'm downloading this thing, and will test it when I get home from work, because I'd like to load it out with some weapons and see if it can compete in a dogfight!

It's a great design I agree, I don't want to download the mods to support it, but I'm thinking I might just install them just to fly it

You already have the landing gear. I'm guessing you don't use Tweakscale or B9 PWings? Now that I think about it, it's tempting to do some work on that FA-18 with the procedural wings in an attempt to reduce part count a touch.

[Halsfury]

You already have the landing gear. I'm guessing you don't use Tweakscale or B9 PWings? Now that I think about it, it's tempting to do some work on that FA-18 with the procedural wings in an attempt to reduce part count a touch.

Well it would really be a touch since it's only 64 parts without armament and tanks.

How are you finding my second version? I think it's a winner, turn time has been greatly reduced and it's way more forgiving. It never used to be able to buzz the tower and VAB at less than 200m/s and slide through the air in high alpha turns close to the ground. It had a very nasty stall with something like a 5 second recovery time, now it's a lot nicer

[FourGreenFields]

This is my new favorite design of yours.

It's a great design I agree, I don't want to download the mods to support it, but I'm thinking I might just install them just to fly it

This thing is beautiful! For what is effectively a Gen 3 fighter, I'm amazed it was able to complete all the requirements. I'm downloading this thing, and will test it when I get home from work, because I'd like to load it out with some weapons and see if it can compete in a dogfight!

As said, Messerschmitt ftw!

And ofcourse it can compete in a dogfight, it's designed by Messerschmitt!

Only question is whether it can be flown properly by the AI.

[TheHengeProphet]

It's a breeze to fly, but I haven't taken the time to put it through the rigors yet. I got really distracted yesterday messing around with trying to get Mach wave drag as low as possible, and found that the flatter I got the yellow line, the higher the number was, which I found odd. So, in an attempt to make a craft with as little wave-drag as possible, I made a lifting-body craft just to test things out... and that rabbit hole got deep, heh...

I'm planning on testing the FA-18, and other player planes after I get off work. Maybe even having them dogfight eachother! Though, I'm not sure the AI really understands dogfighting very well, with fixed guns at least.

[CrisK]

I created a twin tail version of the X-32 in the configuration that was proposed (but never built) by Boeing.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I also modified the original delta wing design so that it only has 50 parts, and it's down to 12000kg.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Both of them are super maneuverable, capable of pulling up to 18-20gs, vertical climbs, etc. I'm not sure which one to stick with since they both perform just about equally well.

I modified @Halsfury's F18 and @clown_baby's F-22 to take advantage of the latest BDArmory release and I've been having a grand time using them as AI dogfighting drones. The F18 has a tendency to crash or experience aerodynamic failures, but when it's flying well (at a higher altitude) it's pretty deadly.

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As said, Messerschmitt ftw!

And ofcourse it can compete in a dogfight, it's designed by Messerschmitt!

Only question is whether it can be flown properly by the AI.

Well...good job modifying it. Take some credit!

[Halsfury]

I hadn't realized that BD armoury got updated!

I was running 0.8.7 lol

Man If this gets any better then it's almost like KSP would become a copy of falcon 4, Here's my official updated BD armoury F/A-18J

Note the underside has an ECM jammer, and the front has been taken off in favour of the new radar dome part (looks the same as it did, I don't compromise on looks)

Also a couple of chaff holders near the back complete it in terms of defensive measures and I fit another missile under the wing, this time 2 maverick A to G missiles

[TheHengeProphet]

Spent the past six hours or so letting the AI fight each other, and of all the matches, only one plane managed to score any hits: The Heluan HA-300! I had to limit speeds to ~300, just to keep everything within a reasonable range, as the AI has a tendency to always go full bore.

While performing considerably better than the previous iteration, the FA-18 still seemed to be under-performing under AI control. I took the liberties of modifying it, as I noticed its area drag was fairly extreme. You had two blisters near the tail planes, which were causing an unpleasant quantity of drag; also, I replaced the nose cone (as you did in the latest update) with the similarly shaped radome, and was able to angle it to minimize drag, bringing it down fairly close to 1. I also moved the AMRAAMs to the wingtips, and loaded two sidewinders each per mount (realistically, they should hold 3, but the game melts them if you do that), which improved payload wave drag. I never bothered to reattach the drop tanks, considering they weren't useful for dog-fighting. After these modifications, the matches became a colossal circle jerk between it and my plane, never really managing to get close to each other, but trying their hardest to do so.

Here is my updated version:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11337184/FAR%20BD%20FA-18J%20Super%20Hornet%20VH.craft

Also, I noticed the aft flaps on the main wings have a tendency to stall out, causing a lot of drag. I haven't tried to fix this yet, but I may get to it eventually. Your rudders are also given too much authority, and are prone to ripping them off under yaw. Something I should have probably fixed, but didn't bother.

I'm still working on tuning the latest version of the adder. I've gotten its wave drag down to about 0.55, but its weight is fairly hefty under full fuel load, at just over 16 tonnes. Fortunately, I know it should be able to lift off with almost 20 tonnes, so I'll have to see what I can eek out of it in terms of drop tanks and endurance.

[tetryds]

Just to inform everyone that FAR will update soon, and some crucial things will change, like critical mach speed being properly implemented and some other stuff.

If you really know what you are doing I recommend you to grab the dev version now.

[FourGreenFields]

Spent the past six hours or so letting the AI fight each other, and of all the matches, only one plane managed to score any hits: The Heluan HA-300!

No need to comment that I'd say. Going to add it to the KerbalX description of it.

[CrisK]

I'm tempted to record a few dogfights using everyone's crafts and then put them on YouTube.

[Halsfury]

@TheHengeProphet that's really funny, and the AI doesn't really get the picture I don't think.

I've designed the F-18 to be an american fighter, what that means is that it is a pure energy fighter. The work I did on it with the V2 version was mainly just to improve low speed manoeuvrability with an eye to increasing a pilot's options but by no means does it change the reality of the design and how it's supposed to fight.

Based on what you're saying the AI doesn't really know what it's supposed to be doing, and is seemingly stuck by it's own limited parameters and is unable to recognize a dogfight as more than flying in circles at a set altitude.

Maybe you should overcome this by giving both planes the same altitude advantage in back to back fights, with both designs taking turns holding off a higher altitude aggressor.

Also the HA-300 coming out on top would make sense if everyone turned in a circle together with no real tactical understanding

Edited August 21, 2015 by Halsfury

[TheHengeProphet]

By scoring hits, it managed to bounce one bullet off a craft in a couple dog-fights. Not much, but it was the only one able to do so. Otherwise, it was at a clear and stark disadvantage, as the other craft would strafe in at phenomenal speeds and climb away before the Heulan could really react. I'm tempted to slap a turbojet on there and see how it performs then.

As for the FA-18 vs Adder, fights got kind of interesting when I set the default height to around 3000m, and the default speed to around 300. The fight went from planes going between 900m and 5000m, to going between 900m and 11000m. I found the fights were most interesting if I set the max speed to around 270, and kept it at the default 1500m, because the planes would actually try to fight each other, and not try to snipe from 2000m away.

Oh, I noticed you tacked on Mavericks, but you have no laser targeting system. Something to think about.

I'm starting to think that one of the issues may be that the AI is trying to fight as though it's stock aerodynamics, and as such can't quite aim... Don't want to bother uninstalling FAR just to test this, though.

Just to inform everyone that FAR will update soon, and some crucial things will change, like critical mach speed being properly implemented and some other stuff.

If you really know what you are doing I recommend you to grab the dev version now.

Thanks for the update! I might have to do that, and see how stuff is.

Edited August 21, 2015 by TheHengeProphet

[Halsfury]

I Figured out the laser targeting system eventually, I sort of couldn't help but notice as my missiles flew right past an AAA cannon emplacement.

What I haven't figured out yet is HARM missiles, I think that a version of the hornet with electronic warfare missiles would be much more useful but I can't get a lock on the smaller track and scan radar I've been using on my air defence platforms

In short I would like a wild weasel F-18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel

Edited August 21, 2015 by Halsfury

[Scoundrel]

IWhat I haven't figured out yet is HARM missiles, I think that a version of the hornet with electronic warfare missiles would be much more useful but I can't get a lock on the smaller track and scan radar I've been using on my air defence platforms

Open up BDA manager window, select modules, select Radar Warning Receiver and then click on the illuminating radar (your SAM) on the threat display. That will tell the HARM which radar set to target.

[Halsfury]

Open up BDA manager window, select modules, select Radar Warning Receiver and then click on the illuminating radar (your SAM) on the threat display. That will tell the HARM which radar set to target.

Thanks

Also, can you see a resemblance?

Can't get it to go too fast yet, I think with just 1 engine I actually have to care a bit more about area ruling.

[TheHengeProphet]

I'm going to do some tests with AJE. I want to see how these craft compare with more realistic engine modeling. Will probably update later with the results.

[update] Something involved with AJE turns the air to soup. Possibly a bug of some sorts, so I asked them and am waiting for a reply.

[update 2] Turns out it is involved with intake area governed specifically by AJE, and it not likely supporting intakes from mods not specifically supported.

[update 3] Turns out it is likely involved directly with Mk2 Expansion's interaction with AJE, as its setup needs to be updated to allow for it.

Edited August 22, 2015 by TheHengeProphet